I’m honored to be the first "fan" blog here on mlb.com, and I hoped I’ve entertained you over these past two years.

An opportunity has come up for me to join a great group of baseball bloggers at a site called Baseball Toaster.
As they succinctly state: "Baseball Toaster is a collection of blogs by a group of friends who love baseball and enjoy writing about it."

I’m specifically joining a blog called Humbug Journal, which is run by Ken Arneson and features quirky, atypical analysis and evaluation of the game. There might be poetry, there might be a Jeopardy-inspired quiz, there might be "useless information-type" posts … you never know what Ken, or I, or "Emma Nickel" will be posting.

I invite to you take a peek at the entire Toaster line-up, and drop in at the Humbug!

Now, I won’t be totally giving up my blog here … but I’ll probably post here when the subject matter may not be quite right for Humbug. (And of course, I’ll want to drop in an say "hi" to Cyn, Kellia, Zack and my other blogger buddies from time to time).

I want to publicly thanks Mark Newman for his support of DAFH, and his yeoman work with the blogs in general. Bravo sir!

But the Twins catcher, who was 6-4 last season, has pushed past 6-5 and is approaching 6-6.

The
team lists him at 6-5 in the media guide, but Mauer acknowledged that
he is actually 6-6 "wearing shoes."I’ve been growing ever since last
year," he said Wednesday. "I don’t want to get too big, or I might have
to move [positions]."

========================================

$5 says its a spiked Gatorade growth hormone plot by Ozzie Guillen, so that the Twins have to move Mauer from behind the plate, where he has the most offensive value.

"Cable subscribers will once again be able to watch out-of-market
Major League Baseball games, ending their fears that the Extra Innings
package would become the exclusive domain of DirecTV for the next seven
years.

M.L.B. and InDemand — a
consortium that is owned by the cable operators Comcast, Time Warner
and Cox — agreed last night to restore Extra Innings swiftly to their
systems as a free preview through sometime next week, after which it
will cost a discounted $159 for a short period.

The
crucial part of the negotiations for baseball was InDemand’s agreement
to carry the MLB Channel, which is to make its debut in 2009.

Between the deals made with DirecTV and InDemand, baseball said the
channel will have 40 million subscribers when it starts. “We believe we
have a compelling product that our fans are passionate about,” Brosnan
said.

Robert D. Jacobson, InDemand’s president, said: “We’re
very comfortable with the deal. We feel we were treated very fairly
related to DirecTV.”

The InDemand partnership received an equity
stake of a little below 20 percent in the MLB Channel, which is about
equal to DirecTV’s.

M.L.B. will receive an average of $100
million a year through 2013 for the Extra Innings rights from DirecTV
and cable operators. The size of their yearly payments will be reduced
if Dish negotiates its own deal.

Baseball will benefit further
from its majority share of the estimated $120 million in annual gross
subscriber fees that the channel will generate."

This season, their between innings commercial break screen features a baseball floating around the screen. When it reaches the edge of the screen, you hear a little Pong-like "blip" and then it floats to another corner, or towards the middle, where there is a MLB.TV "bumper". If it heads towards the bottom of the screen, a "commercial break in progress" "paddle" slides over to keep the ball floating around the screen.

Its MLB.TV "Breakout" …. its cute and clever.

(amended …. it IS cute and clever … but it DOES get a bit tiresome after a few innings)